


healing hurts like hell

by lulabo



Category: Go On (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 12:05:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2269062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulabo/pseuds/lulabo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anne goes through Patty's things. It fucking sucks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	healing hurts like hell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betternovembers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betternovembers/gifts).



> with thanks to my first and favorite beta.

The only way she could figure spending the day with Lauren was that it would end with a drink. Lots of drinks, actually. In a dark bar, nothing frou-frou. Whiskey. Bourbon. Something with a good amber burn.

She hadn’t meant to mention that Patty’s things were still all in the basement, but when the kid mentioned in group that he’d been looking for a certain edition of a certain comic book, Anne had automatically offered to let him loot Patty’s collection. (Her wife had been a Lilith Fair aficionado and a devoted fan of Spider-Man. And Wonder Woman. And the Dick Van Dyke show, but Anne was pretty sure that was 98% to do with Laura Petrie’s ass in capris.) Lauren had latched on—as long as you’re hanging on to Patty’s possessions, you’re holding yourself back. The combination of intense eye contact and flattery (“you’ve made so much progress, you’ve been doing so well, I’m so proud of you,” etc) had felled her.

Which is why she’s now hip deep in boxes on a Saturday afternoon while her kids are playing Laser Tag with K. (She thinks it’s laser tag. She heard lasers, tag, and “protective eye gear,” and she feels safer making certain assumptions.) Lauren has a legal pad where she’s writing up a list for tax documentation, putting things in piles as Anne hands them to her.

“Patty really had a thing for leisure wear,” Lauren says, writing down another velour sweatsuit.

“She was a highly successful business woman; she liked to take off her power suits and slip on some Juicy at the end of the day,” Anne says. “If you’re going to judge my dead wife’s fashion choices, you can—“

Lauren holds up her hands in conciliation. “I’m sorry, you’re right. This is a judgment free zone.”  
She turns in the direction of a box piled high with ceramics. “How would you like to deal with these… mugs?” she asked. Her voice goes up as she lists things. “Bowls? Is this a vase?”

Anne stops sorting blazers—Patty rocked a shoulder pad like no one’s business—and looks over. She’s not sure which is worse, the fact that Patty’s clothes still smell like Patty, powdery and sweet and citrusy, or the fact that she can see Patty’s thumbprint on the magenta mug in Lauren’s hand, clear as day.

“We’ll hang on to those,” she says.

Lauren makes one of her Group Faces. Sympathy and sadness and impatience and a slight squint. It’s a face that works. “Anne. I know how hard this is for you—”

Anne folds several blazers over her arm. “Those aren’t mine to give away. Patty would take the kids to Color Me Mine every couple of weeks, just the three of them.” She looks at Lauren over her glasses. “You can get a lot of shit for being a working mother when you get knocked up because you’re a dummy, but imagine being a lesbian with adopted kids that belong in a Benetton ad and still electing to work 60 hours a week,” she says. “She was here for every bedtime, every fever, every recital, every weird project. She didn’t take them out of guilt. She took them because she loved spending time with them, and because giving out the mugs they made at the firm shut up every single narrow-minded prick who ever insinuated she was anything other than better than them.” She pushes the blazers at Lauren. “And she was. She wasn’t perfect, but she was…”

Lauren smiles a Group Smile, which doesn’t stop it from being a genuine one. “She was imperfectly perfect.”

“She was a pain in the ass is what she was,” Anne says. “And she had the chest of a German beermaid, which means these clothes are absolutely useless to me.” She puts her hand on another box. “Clothes, shoes, all of it goes. The Kid can have the comics, as long as he promises to share them with my actual kids if they ever show an interest. And the tchotchkes,” she says. “Put ‘em aside, I’ll figure out something to do with them.”

She texts King before she and Lauren leave for the bar. She lets Lauren drive, despite the fact that Lauren insists she can only stay for one drink because she’s got an open house in the morning, and she could really use the commission.

“No offense, Lauren,” Anne says, “I love you, you’re a gem, you’ve done good work with me today, but I’m about this close to telling you to shut the fuck up.” She holds her thumb and forefinger apart a half an inch. “Nothing personal, but I can’t hear you speak except to offer to pay the tab.”

Lauren nods, saying nothing. Her “I understand, this day has been very difficult for you, but I’m immensely proud of you, and I’m so glad I was able to help you through this tremendous moment of personal growth and letting go” is communicated silently through a series of smiles and taps on the steer wheeling. She’s humming, too, which Anne finds only slightly less fucking annoying than it is actually soothing.

She’s on her third Manhattan—no cherries, she’s a lesbian, not a fucking punchline—when Ryan shows up. Lauren squeezes her shoulder and does not say how proud she is, of both of them, before she slips away. Ryan orders a beer and sits next to her.

“So,” he says.

“Do not speak,” she says, “until you are spoken to.” 

“The day went that well, did it?”

She shrugs. “It could have been worse. It could have been better.”

“How?”

“She could have been there to go through her fucking clothes herself.”

Ryan says nothing, just gestures for another drink for her.

“Well, if I know Lauren—and after all this time, I think, unfortunately, I sorta do—that stuff will be out of your house before you get home,” he says, after her drink arrives. “So your load is a little lighter.”

“Bullshit,” she says. “You should definitely not say stuff like that, King.”

He’s wincing. “I felt that, as soon as I said it, I knew it was a thing I shouldn’t have said.”

“Ever,” she says.

“Did you keep anything?”

Anne realizes she’s shredding a napkin between her fingers. “A box of Color Me Mine shit she made with the kids,” she says. “I figure they should get to decide if they want to keep any of it. It’s not good—all the good ones she either gave away or we already use. Aside from the kids’ work, which we use in spite of its shittiness, because you don’t hide your kids’ shitty artwork.”

“You know, when Janie died—”

“Are we talking about you, now?”

“—her mom took a bunch of these little mirrors Janie collected and smashed them all. She turned them into this tile-type-thing that she put in the garden path at her house,” he says. “She really likes it.”

Anne finishes her drink. “Do I look like a crafty person?”

He grins a little, making one of those noises he makes when he’s slightly amused. “No, but you do look like a woman who would enjoy smashing a bunch of her dead wife’s shitty art projects.”

He drives her home so she can pour herself into bed after taking an aspirin and drinking a liter of water. K’s put the kids to bed and spent the evening in silent meditation in her bedroom, balanced on his elbows and the top of his head. He passes out for a minute when he rights himself, and she sits waiting for him to come to as she slugs her water. When he startles awake, she claps him on the back and sends him to Ryan to deal with. She goes through her drawers, just to make sure he hasn’t done it, and she’s thankful to find everything right where she left it. Patty’s UConn tee shirt is still comfortably nestled among all Anne’s other pajamas, and she slides it over her head before she climbs beneath the sheets. It doesn’t smell like Patty—it’s not like she’s been wearing the last shirt Patty ever wore before the suit she was wearing when she died without washing it. She’s not a fucking psycho. But she likes how it hangs on her, how comfortable it is, how it washes softer and softer over time. She likes that the kids don’t freak out if they see her in it. She likes going to bed and feeling a little less alone.

Ryan was right. The next morning, Anne finds a receipt stuck to the inside of her screen door from the Goodwill for her donated goods. And she doesn’t feel lighter—her load isn’t less. But the basement is a lot more spacious now. Maybe she’ll install a hardwood floor and put the kids in tap and ballet. Maybe she’ll turn it into her own personal opium den. Maybe she’ll think about roller derby again. (She has a great name picked out: Rachel Bad-dow.)

It takes her two weeks to broach to the kids what they might want to do with Mom’s Color Me Mine castoffs. They agree that it’s all pretty shitty (they say “not good”, she corrects them, “shitty”, and they clap their hands over their mouths in shock). They laugh over how bad Patty was at painting anything with curves, at first. The kids tear up maybe a little, and it ends in snuggling on the couch. Anne asks if they miss Color Me Mine. They do, they say. They would get hot chocolate and cupcakes after. Patty never forgot to go back and get their stuff after it’d been fired and glazed. It made them feel important that she would remember, how she showed it off and gave it to the guys at work. Anne asks if they’d like it if she takes them, some time. Some time, they say.

She tells them about Ryan’s smashing project the next morning, and their enthusiasm is overwhelming. Smashing shit, they think, is amazing, and they should be doing 100% more smashing of shit in their day-to-day. Saturday, she says. We’ll go out, we’ll get glue, we’ll get goggles and hammers and something to glue the shards into. Her kids head off to school smiling.

Anne brings their efforts to group the next week, after they’re dry. There’s a wooden drinks tray inlaid with brightly colored bits and pieces, a picture frame, and a box the kids want Anne to put on her desk at work.

“For what?” Yolanda asks.

“Pencils and shit, I don’t know, Yolanda,” she says. “For what’s not the point.”

“Of course it’s not,” Lauren says. “The point is that you and Abigail and Nathan did something healing together, as a family. Do you like it?”

Anne looks at them. There’s glue everywhere, and the color variation is a fucking mess.

“They’re perfect,” she says.


End file.
